Friday, February 03, 2006

Standpipe Summer?

Ministers warned yesterday that there could be serious water shortages in the South East this year after the Meteorological Office said that England and Wales had the driest January for almost a decade.The South East and central southern England had already suffered the fourth driest year on record last year and the driest year since 1973.The driest counties, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex and Kent, have received only 70 per cent of their normal rainfall over the past 15 months. Some parts of Southern England and Wales had less than half of their average rainfall in January, according to the Met Office.Southern Water has already started pumping water from the River Medway into Bewl Water near Lamberhurst, after it reached its lowest-ever level.

9 comments:

Hog's View
said...

Perhaps now would be a good time to stop building so many houses in the South East if the water supply is in such a bad way?, Ashford is due to have a 1000 houses a year for the next 30 years. What will these householders drink (or indeed where will they work?)

In a desperate effort to try and save fresh/sweet water, one can start in the home.My loo has a 2 litre bottle filled and sunk in the flush cistern at home. Consequently SAVING 2 litre's every time it's flushed. It makes no difference to the toilet.The washing maschine is only used when neccessary. We found that we could wear, in winter, clothes for more than one day. We take showers instead of bath's, and the hosepipe never came out of the shed last year or this year. I am planting hardy plants this year, nothing that needs extra water. I will only get the car washed at the garages where the water is filtered and re-cycled.

I think though, that our dearly beloved Council, ought to get a flyer sent out reminding the Thanet Resident's of these water saving tips.

I still feel that a Desalinting Plant is a neccessity here. It could supply water to Bewl, Maidstone, and everywhere South and East of there. The £20,000,000 it would cost would be split between all water users (metered) so that you PAY for what you USE.

These are my thoughts on the future life on this planet and have a real bearing on the way we wish to survive.

Desalination is a very expensive energy consumer and is best suited to very sunny countries where solar energy can be used to power it.We tried using less water ( with a hippo device supplied by the water company) to flush the loo but did not get a good flush, necessitating multiple flushes which is hardly the idea.Maybe one of the new loos which are designed to operate with less water would be worth changing to.The old high level cistern used gravity to give a better flush than many of the low level ones of today, why did we change?

How about a multi functioning building then? We need fresh/sweet water, we can get it from the sea.We need to burn our rubbish, why not combine this heat to the powering of the desalintion process? ALSO, there could be some solar panels on the roof of the building and in the neighbouring land for back up.(I'm still thinking Richborough Power Station).It would be an excellent cheap way to keep the water Plant running to capacity, providing electricity for nearby factories/shopping centre's, and the water pumps. Good heavens, that might be tooooooo self sufficient. It could be done, with a little help from our Politicians.

The fact that we can seriously talk out about water shortages in this wet country of ours is an ABSOLUTE DISGRACE!If Goverment had planned ahead by insisting on the creation of extra water storage capacity in the SE or had the water industry create a national water grid using pipelines and rivers THERE WOULD BE NO PROBLEM.All the water saving measures we householders are asked to make and further exhortations to use water sparingly and wisely are all a smokescreen to obscure the villains of the piece: INCOMPETENT GOVERNMENT and PRIVATISED WATER COMPANIES.

Maybe if, like Dr M's enlightened friends in the Middle East, we had spent our oil money over the past 30 years addressing the problems of the future, and not just using it to give ourselves the luxury of scrounging around on the dole, or dreaming up mad schemes for the glorification of politicians both local and national, we wouldn't be in the state we are now.